


Fearless. Completely Fearless.

by moontyrant



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Gen, Lemon Cakes, Oblivious Eric Bittle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7371118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moontyrant/pseuds/moontyrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Suzanne Bittle keeps a Pinterest board of rainbow cake recipes, Jack Freaking Zimmermann comes to visit, and Coach Bittle loves his gay son.<br/>Too bad Eric only knows about one out of three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fearless. Completely Fearless.

People look at the Bittle household, and they make wild assumptions. They see Suzanne and think _Southern gossip_. They see Richard Bittle and see _bully_. They see Eric, and they somehow think _weak_.

Richard Bittle leaned over the counter and glared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He had an impressive beard and mustache, but it had been growing wild around the edges, and that wouldn’t do. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Appearances matter. When you’re a Bittle, you’re a major player in the community. And you need to look like a major player. It’s _important_.

Suzanne padded into the room, putting a pair of dangly earrings on. “And Dicky is bringing his little friend with him.”

“I know, dear.”

“And you’re not going to push them, Richard.”

“Yes, dear.”

“They can take as long as they need to.”

“Yes, dear.” He set the razor on the counter and rinsed his face off.

The first time Eric called his father Coach outside of practice broke Richard’s heart. He felt it snap cleanly in two. But there was nothing to do. The damage had been done. No sense getting worked up. No sense worrying Eric about it. Richard breathed out and did the only thing he knew how to do; he pushed forward.

This is what Eric didn’t know: his father loved him as much as he feared for him.

Suzanne and Richard knew about Eric’s orientation for years. It didn’t really come as a surprise, or a big aha moment, or anything like that. It became a matter of adding up the clues until denying the truth took more mental gymnastics than a body could withstand.

In Eric’s earliest years, it was all about fitting in. This is how young boys dress. These are the toys young boys play with. These are the games boys play. Eric’s entire childhood was exhausting, counterproductive, and terrifying.

Because being Eric in the deep south wasn’t safe. Never mind lunatics dressed like ghosts and burning crosses, the casual cruelty of classmates and teachers would be enough to…to…

Richard’s eyes snapped open in the dark, and he reached out to pat the other side of the bed. His hand met only cool sheets. He scrambled up and crept down the hall, peeked in the little bedroom. Eric, so small, only seven years old, slept untroubled, clutching his stuffed rabbit. Richard rubbed his face and then padded back down the hall, drawn by the yellow light of the kitchen and the smell of pie shells.

He dropped a kiss on Suzanne’s hair.

“Richard,” she scolded softly. “Go back to bed. You have work in the morning.”

He shook his head. “Can’t sleep.” He bumped his shoulder against hers. “What’re we making tonight?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I am making strawberry rhubarb pie. _You_ are going to hand me things as I call for them.”

He gave her a little salute. “Yes, dear.”

They worked on the pies, and when Suzanne set them by the window sill to cool, Richard threw an arm across her shoulders. “I think we’re going about this all wrong.”

She nodded. “We can’t make Eric something he isn’t. But we can’t just throw him to the wolves either. That poor boy…”

His arm tightened across her shoulders. Yes that poor boy, and he didn’t need to ask to know she wasn’t talking about Eric.

When people talked to him about it, apparently he got a weird look on his face, like he was going to flip a table. Coach Bittle had yet to flip a table during a discussion, but he had come pretty close on multiple occasions. The details surrounding Alex Sneider’s death were vague at best; there was foul play involved, everyone knew that, but no one could know what really happened. In the splashing pool of ignorance on that front, Richard couldn’t really work up a good outrage. No, it was what came after that nagged at him. Poor boy…

His name was Alex Sneider, only fifteen years old and another statistic. There had been talk that the Presbyterian church the Sneiders belonged to wouldn’t allow them to bury their son in the graveyard out back; instead of being laid to rest with the grandparents and great-grandparents that went before him, young Alex would have to be interred in a strange place, probably beside the railroad tracks. Richard didn’t know how that had been resolved.

“We can’t change Eric,” Richard murmured into her hair. “But maybe we could change the people around him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Our boy’s athletic enough, if we can get him into a good contact sport—football, for preference—we can kill two birds with one stone. Teach Eric how to take and dish out a hit, and surround him with a team.”

“And the team could watch out for him where we can’t,” Suzanne murmured. She sounded skeptical.

“We have time,” he assured her. “We have time.”

“You know, he’s been asking for ice skating lessons?”

Richard perked up at that. “Yes! We could get him into hockey, good contact sport.”

“Sweetheart. He wants to get into figure skating.”

Richard groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course he does.”

“He’s fearless, you know that? Completely fearless.”

“He gets that from you.” He gave his wife another squeeze and then stepped away, weary to his bones. “But we need to compromise on something. Figure skating? Fine. Then he’s going to be the best damn figure skater that ever wore blue sequins. His coach is going to be a complete maniac if I have anything to say about that. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason, dear.”

 

 

 

 

 

Richard knew exactly what he wanted to say if—when—Eric eventually came out. He practiced the little speech in the mirror, in the shower, in his sleep, with Suzanne. It was simple and it changed from time to time, but the core of it always stayed. He sat on those words for so long, waiting for Eric to give him the opportunity to use them. And every year waiting was another tiny heart break.

Suzanne had been raving about Bad Bob and Jack Zimmermann since she had met them. Richard overheard several phone conversations where Suzanne cooed about how _tall_ and _handsome_ Jack was, _Don’t you think so, Dicky?_ How do you tell your son it’s okay to come out, without saying any such thing? They weren’t going to drag him out, but really the waiting was getting ridiculous.

And now Jack Zimmermann was spending Independence Day at the Bittle household.

“He’s here!” Eric shrieked, and launched himself across the house for the front door. Then took a moment to make sure his hair was sitting flat before he flung the door open. “Jack!”

And damn, but Richard did his research on this Jack Zimmermann, but Wikipedia hadn’t done him justice. Wealthy, older than Eric, Canadian, and tall as hell. It was like God sat in His workshop one day and said, _What are hockey players made of?_ And then unleashed Jack Zimmermann onto the unwitting human populace.

“Coach, this is Jack, from school. Jack, this is my dad.”

Richard took Jack’s hand and gave him a firm shake, never breaking eye contact. “A pleasure to meet you,” Richard drawled, a regular Georgian peach, nothing to see here.  

They ate dinner together, all chatting—Richard listening more than speaking—and the subject turned to hockey and he couldn’t keep himself from watching Eric, who was watching Jack, who was talking with all the sobriety and passion of a real diehard. Maybe everyone else missed it, but Richard saw Eric’s face, and you don’t look at another person like that until you’re well past the point of no return.

They cleaned up the dinner mess by degrees, and Eric sidled up to the sink to help Suzanne with the dishes. Richard got to his feet and shooed his son away. “Go entertain our guest, Junior.”

Suzanne chuckled and waited until Eric scampered into the living room before she talked in that secret low Mom voice. “So how do you like Jack?”

He took a plate from her and rinsed it before setting it on the drying rack. “Solid boy, very serious. He needs to unclench but that might just be because he’s in a strange place.”

“Dicky is more than a little in love with him, and I think it’s mutual.”

“Dicky is out of Jack Zimmermann’s league,” Richard sniffed.

“They adore each other.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Do you think he’ll tell us?”

“I don’t know, hon. I hope so.”

Eric never knew that his parents had been waiting with bated breath for him to come out to them since seventh grade. But with every passing year, the wait felt less suspenseful and more ridiculous, like a joke that’s been told too many times, so it’s not funny so much as annoying.

Eric will come out when he is ready.

Richard and Suzanne told themselves those simple words all the time, a mantra of patience.

Eric will come out when he is ready.

Sometimes, he would look at them, and the wistfulness on his face was enough to break Richard’s heart all over again. Eric would open his mouth, with big eyes full of bravery, and then he would say something that was definitely Not Coming Out of the Closet. And then he would be privately miserable for a spell.

“He’s killing me, Richard,” Suzanne told him in the comforting darkness of the night. He squeezed her hand under the blankets. “I’m dying. Maybe, maybe I could make him a big rainbow cake.”

“Seven layers of obnoxious parental support,” Richard grinned into the dark.

“Well, I was thinking more of a white cake with food coloring, some really light frosting?”

“Lemon cake, with the lemon frosting. And chocolate chips.”

“Get out of my house,” she growled, and he smothered a laugh into his pillow.

“Let him take his time,” Richard told her, rubbing a palm against her back in apology. “The ball’s in his court. We just have to wait for him to come out, at his own pace, on his own terms.”

“And then I’ll make a rainbow cake. To celebrate.”

“And then you can make a rainbow cake to celebrate.”

Eric took the pickup truck to the field so he and Jack could watch the fireworks. “It’s like every bad country song,” Suzanne sighed.

“It’s very romantic,” Richard grunted.

“I have no idea where he gets that from,” Suzanne chided him.

He snorted, and then jostled her with his elbow. “Y’know, the kids are going to be gone for hours. This big empty house all to ourselves.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

The Bittles were of course unrumpled and calm by the time Eric and Jack stumbled back into the house. The same could not be said for Eric and, wow.

Suzanne coughed into her fist and hid her face behind her book. Richard’s blank expression didn’t so much as twitch. “Boys,” he greeted, gruff.

“Hey Coach. Hey Mom. Um, we’re beat. Gonna. Gonna hit the hay. Thanks for waiting up.”

Eric had a hand pressed over an impressive hickey and his hair had taken a detour through a tornado and, ah yes, he was wearing the shirt Jack had on when they had supper.

And Jack looked about ten times worse. Partly because he was wearing Eric’s shirt, and it didn’t fit him at all. And he had three hickeys that were just visible (ugh). And he was walking very stiffly, as if something terrible (or terrific) had happened to his nether regions.

“Good night, boys,” Richard grunted, and turned back to the television.

“Sleep well!” Suzanne choked out. They waited until they heard Eric’s bedroom door shut (Jack hadn’t even pretended to sleep in the guest room after his first day here. So gross.) before she turned gleeful eyes on Richard. “Rainbow cake! Rainbow cake! Rainbow cake!” she chanted in an undertone.

 

 

 

“Eric ran to the store for baking supplies,” Richard said, when Jack’s face had gone from bewildered to panicked. Jack was used to keeping strange hours—he was the kind of person who believed in two four o’clocks in a day—and the flight had done a real number on him, so he stole a few furtive naps here and there to compensate. Richard waved Jack over and he took the seat on the couch next to him. His knee bounced, an anxious tic. That was annoying, but he suspected that saying as much would only make Jack’s knee bounce harder. They needed a Distraction.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I went hunting?”

“No, sir.”

Which would make sense, because he and Jack haven’t exchanged more than a handful of words without Eric or Suzanne as chaperones. “This is a beer story,” Richard told him, and got up to grab him a beer. “Do you drink, Jack?”

“A little.”

“Good answer. Everything in moderation.” Richard cracked open his beer and took a swig. “So, the first time I go hunting I must be about eleven years old. Too young to be trusted with a motor vehicle but my Pappy puts a rifle in my hands and tells me this is how it’s gonna be. So we’re up in the blind—that’s like a treehouse for hunters—and this beautiful doe walks into our sightline, with these two fawns with their spots still on them. Now, hunters don’t really like going for does if they can help it, and they don’t go for fawns because then you don’t have any deer for hunting the next year. So this happy little deer family is just rambling by, but then Papa deer wanders over.

“Now, my own Papa is right next to me, telling me how to do this. So I line up this shot, got this huge buck dead center. I don’t even think about it. I pull the trigger. And this deer family goes running, the momma and the babies, but Papa Deer goes down like a sack of bricks.” He took a long pull from his beer. “I cried so much, my Pappy banned me from hunting for the rest of my life.” He spared Jack’s floored expression a glance. “It’s funnier when Suzanne tells it. But this wool gathering has a point, Mister Zimmermann.

“I know I look like a big old tough guy, but I’m really not. I coach football, I’m big, I know I look imposing. But at the end of the day, I’d rather eat shit than say shit. I wouldn’t want to raise my voice against anyone, let alone my hand.” He took another long drink.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time Suzanne went hunting?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay, so we were dating at the time, and I just tell her to have a good time. And sure enough she comes back with this huge buck. This thing is ridiculous. And all I want to know is why is it in my yard. Because, see, normal people take their bucks to get processed all neat and proper. You pay a fee and someone gives you the meat and the antlers. No fuss, no mess.

“Not Suzanne. She drained, skinned, gutted and cleaned that buck herself. And she looks all sweet and cute and small, but I can never unsee the love of my life drenched in the blood of something she killed with her own hands, while chattering at full speed about venison recipes.” He clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Junior’s sweet Ma is a damn maniac, son. So try to stay on her good side and life will be nothing but pie and Sunday brunch. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, sir.” And Jack didn’t look frightened so much as bewildered, which Richard would like to count as a win.

The front door opened. “We bought pecans!” Eric declared, as he and his mother walked in, burdened with more groceries than two people so small should be able to bear.

Suzanne beamed at the couch where Jack and Richard sat. “Are y’all getting along okay?” she asked, so sweet and warm.

“A maniac,” Richard murmured, and got an actual honest-to-goodness laugh out of Jack.

 

“Dad.”

Richard’s hands stilled from where they had been working the brush of polish across his good dress shoes. He only broke them out for weddings and funerals, but with Eric’s graduation tomorrow he couldn’t justify wearing anything else to the ceremony. He looked up to where Eric stood in the hotel suite doorway and, God, what had he ever done to that boy?

Because going to Samwell had been so good for Eric. He learned how to stand taller, so much so that Richard would have sworn he had grown three inches in that first semester. He smiled more and laughed louder and had an entire chat room of friends that adored him. And Eric had been Eric, he would always be Eric, but he seemed even more Eric since going to Samwell. The day before, he gave his father the tour of the campus, and Richard saw firsthand how seamlessly his son belonged there. Samwell was his world, his life, and it made him happy in a way Madison never had.

But here, on the threshold of the bland hotel room, Eric seemed so small and scared.

“Junior?”

“I’m gay.”

Two little words punched Richard right through, enough that he could only blink up at his son, who was so gentle and good and kind and brave. His impossible boy.

Eric breathed hard and chattered, all nervous energy and looking at the ground. “I know you don’t really understand, I mean, it’s not really ideal but I can’t not be—I can’t turn it off—I…”

In one fluid motion Richard stood and swept Eric into his arms, pulling him into a tight hug. Tears soaked into the front of Richard’s shirt, and his arms tightened around his boy. At last, he found his voice. “I am so honored. You…you are everything I ever could have wanted in a son and more, Eric. I love you,” he sucked in a shuddering breath, “I love you without conditions or reserve, my brave, stubborn, gentle, sweet, boy.” He patted his son’s back, and they stepped away. Richard gave him a watery smile. “Thank you. So much. For telling me.”

Eric swiped at his eyes, as if there could ever be shame in something so human. “I thought you would have been…disappointed.”

“I don’t think I could ever be disappointed in you, Junior. Does your mother know?”

He nodded. “I told her a few minutes ago. She seemed to take it pretty well.”

“Well enough to put chocolate chips in lemon cake batter?”

Eric frowned. “Okay, ew? No. Ew, Coach.”

**Author's Note:**

> AhhhhhhHHHHHhhhhhHHHHh!


End file.
